Why do women and men dress so differently?

Let’s start by admitting that I find so many things in this world strange. One of those things is why men and women dress so differently? I can understand that the female and male body shape are different, but this would only explain a small amount of the differences.

These are the kind of differences that I have encountered:

• Women wear tight clothing, while men rarely do (think of skinny jeans, certain dresses and a lot of other clothing that assumes the body shape).
• Women wear certain of loose clothing that a less defined shape when compared with men’s clothing (think of certain tops or other upper body wear).
• Some women’s clothes have intentional folds or other features not strictly required for the clothing.
• Women’s clothes sometimes have so called “detailing”, little things that are added to the clothing to make it look different. Lace is one those things.
• Women’s clothing on average has more nakedness around the “cleavage” area.
• There are whole classes of clothing assumed to be for women only in (my) culture, pantyhoses/tights, dresses, skirts, high heeled shoes and a lot more things that I simply don’t know the name of.
• Women’s clothing seems to cover every colour of the rainbow, while men’s clothing is more limited in it’s colours.
• A lot of floral patterns, butterfly patterns or other graphics depicting nature are often restricted to women’s clothing, while men seem to be stuck with some graphic with stupid text of some arbitrary company name and a date it was established.

You probably get the picture.

What has happened here is that clothing, which certainly isn’t a body part or an inherent property of being a male or female, has been polarized. This is I think is due to the relations men and women have had over the course of history. It was typically the women’s job to do the initial attracting of the man, this combined with the fact that men were there to provide resources for the women/family has led to the situation that women are viewed as objects sometimes, while men are sometimes viewed as tools/resources to be used.

Objects are valued by their appearance, while tools are valued by their usefulness.

This all I could come up with while writing this, I personally don’t mind what people wear, sometimes I see clothing or other aspects of appearance which make me look for a second, but then I realize that my own actions cause similar responses in other people. One day I hope it doesn’t really matter what people wear. But in order to do this we must become aware of this, it won’t happen automatically if you consider the current situation as normal. This massive male/female polarization (far beyond the scope of the very real biological differences) needs to be rebalanced before men and women can meet as equals and this clothing thing is just one of the many symptoms of inequality.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, please comment if you have something on your mind that you want to share.

Strong and independent women right up until the moment they are not

I know the title is a bit a provocative, but that is intended. What I want to talk about is an observation or at least a suspicion that females have a natural/biological inclination to solving problems in groups, rather than the more individual “hide in cave” approach that males tend to have.

The only half decent explanation I’ve seen is that females release a hormone called oxytocin when talking, and more importantly, during stressful situations. This triggers the so called tend and befriend response as opposed to the fight or flight response which is more common in males. It’s not that males do not have oxytocin, it’s just that they have less estrogen and more testosterone, which reduces the effect when compared with females.

This may be one of the many reasons that females are more group oriented than males. The differences are probably rooted in evolution. The tend and befriend mechanism probably allowed more offspring to survive, in some situations there is strength in numbers.

What I want you to consider the possibility that females are more collective/group oriented even when they claim to be strong and independent. That is not to say there aren’t exceptions. It’s just food for thought, to highlight that despite good intentions when it comes to equality between the sexes we must not forget that there are real differences. It requires awareness before we can even consider going beyond our biological differences.

I’ve found this link interesting to read. This is all for now and until we meet again.

Men going their own way

Men going their own way, or MGTOW in short, is a form of mens rights activism (MRA). In some ways you could describe them as the separatists of the MRA. They are critical of the interactions between men and women, much like the separatist elements of (radical) feminism.

I personally believe in the middle way, but in order to understand the middle you need understand both extremes. Some really excellent videos can be on youtube, the following users are good starting points:

barbarossaaaa

Stardusk

Realize that there are also a few rare very interesting female supporters of the MGTOW, but the fact they more attention than then the equally interesting males is part of the problem. So be critical of this, much in the same way that men amongst radical feminists can be a problem, women amongst MGTOW are to be mistrusted to some extend.

MGTOW offer a critical view on the male side of things, so it’s definately worthwhile to watch a few (dozen) videos to broaden your horizon.

This is all for, hopefully you’ll find some nice videos to watch.

How much gender identity is defined by other gender?

Lets for the sake of argument stick to the two main genders, that of men and women. It’s a simplification, but sometimes that is necessary to make a point.  Just how much of being a man is defined by women and how much of being a women is defined by men?

I’ve already talked about how evolution probably ensured that females prefer males with sufficient resources (e.g. money), while males prefer females with healthy reproductive systems (health, youth, beauty). But this is just the biological side of things, there is also the social and cultural aspect we call gender.

Sometimes I get the impression that a lot gender identity revolves around what the other gender thinks of it. Otherwise we would seeing much greater diversity, because everyone would assume their ideal identify. Instead there is this almost binary system with relatively small groups of people that have broken out of this binary system, probably because it was suffocating for them.

We have words/labels for roles that the two genders are supposed to play, it’s called masculinity and femininity. The boundaries are not so strict as they used to be, this is at least partially due to 2nd wave feminism. The boundaries for a men are still greater then they are for women, masculine behaviour by women is more accepted than feminine behaviour by men.

I’ve talked about how women (when still young and fertile) have some power to demand things from men, at least in general, there will always be men who don’t care about what women want. The reproductive resources that women possess, which are the limiting factor in human reproduction,  have historically forced men to adjust to the needs of women in order to obtain them.

It’s possible that women have simply taken a part of masculinity when they wanted it and men are still looking at women for what to do. While I cannot claim to have information that represents every women on this planet, there are at least some signs that women on average don’t like extremely feminine men and the more she relies on the man (in the provider and protector sense) the greater the preference for masculine men.

I would encourage men and women to be open to the possibility that a better balance can be found if one is not afraid to look outside their own gender box. First find your own balance, then you can worry about interactions with the opposite sex.

There are plenty of biological differences and it doesn’t hurt to be aware of those differences, but the differences that gender create are not innate and make the already existing differences even larger then they already are. I wonder what a world without fixed ideas about gender would look like.

This is all for now, if you have any thoughts to share, you are more than welcome to comment.

Are we afraid of silence?

There are two kinds of silence, namely the lack of sounds and the lack of thoughts. In this case I’m talking about the lack of thoughts.

Many people probably suffer from endless streams of thoughts and trying to silence those is difficult, because the first thing you will probably try is to think that you shouldn’t think, but that’s like flushing away water with water. Instead you must somehow discover a way to let your thoughts slowly disappear on their own.

With a quiet mind comes an increased awareness of things around us and a freedom from worrying or otherwise disturbing thoughts. But somehow (at least for me) the quietness also bothers me on some level, as if my time is better spend doing equally useless things, but that avoid the silence. This is why I think I’m not inclined to do meditation, because it silences the mind for the duration of the meditation.

Do you have any experience with this? How do you feel about silence?

Should there be more gender labels?

Gender is a socially and culturally created identity. Two very common forms of those are men and women. In a black and white world that is all there would be. Often the gender of men maps directly onto the male sex and the gender of women onto the female sex. This is what some call cisgender, the opposite would be transgender.

The big question is if the transgender approach is the correct one. If one assumes that gender is written in stone then transgender is a valid approach. But gender is and remains a socially and culturally created phenomena, so why not get rid of the binary system altogether?

Some transgender people opt for cosmetic surgery to look more like the opposite sex, in essence appearing more like cisgender people. The question that comes to mind, how many of these people would have simply been happy if they could simply express themselves as they would have liked?

Personally i think that the transgender route is the easy way out, it forces people to fit in boxes rather than getting rid of the boxes altogether, but I also realize that a society that promotes a fluid gender identity isn’t perfect either. Heterosexual mating rituals is one point that deserves attention, but that is for a later post.

Until then, please share your comments on this topic.

Children and their caretakers first

In this day and age we still sometimes hear people saying that women and children should go first in case of an emergency. While I can understand children, I do find it disturbing that women are prioritized over men regardless of circumstances.

Some of the reasons I’ve heard or read about (over the course of time) why women should be prioritized:

• They are weaker creatures that need special privilege.
• They have the ability to procreate.
• They are the primary caretakers of children.

Let’s start with the first, while females on average are physically weaker than males, this difference is not day and night and most women should be capable of (for example) swimming. There might be exceptions when it comes to people who are obese or otherwise unhealthy, but such exceptions also exist amongst men.

Females indeed possess the ability create new human beings, but in this day and age where the planet is overpopulated, is this even relevant? The human race is not struggling to survive as it was long ago in our evolutionary past, so there is no need to value reproductive capability this highly.

Both male and female are capable of caring for children, prioritizing a female simply because she might be a parent is not justified. Plenty of females don’t have children, so it would be unfair to males to prioritize them. Prioritizing at least one caretaker of a child is justified, prioritizing more than one is open for debate as it is not strictly necessary for the survival of the child.

I realize that in this post I’m referring to males and females, leaving out the rather sensitive topic of women who are genetically male and vice versa. This is a topic for another post. Until then this is all I have to write.

Happiness

Happiness is somewhat difficult to define. It’s state of well being and contentment according to at least one dictionary. When comparing happiness with pleasure the main differences are that happiness is more long term and less extreme, while pleasure is more short term.

You can have pleasure by seeking out all sorts of sensory experiences, but pleasure is not a guarantee for happiness. You can still be deeply unhappy, because of all the gaps between the moments of pleasure. You can be stuck in a circle forever if you think that pleasure will bring happiness by default. It simply impossible to have pleasure all the time, pleasure exists because there is also non-pleasure, without it, it would have no meaning.

At some point in my life I came across the following quote:

“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness” (Zhuang-Zi)

This person was amongst the earliest interpreters of philosophical Daoism, which is not to be confused with the religion known as Daoism. Daoism is full of seemingly opposite paradoxes, but in this case it’s fairly obvious what it’s about. Striving for happiness means setting a goal, goals come with expectations and with expectations comes disappointment when those expectations are not met. You can never have everything you want, the key is to be happy with what the moment brings. Enjoy the sunshine, but also enjoy the rain.

There are real sources of pain and suffering that can’t be avoided, but a lot of our suffering is simply due to making the choice not to be happy. Think about, there are plenty of people who are happy without being extremely rich, it’s all relative to your expectations.

Simply enjoying the moment is not always easy, but it’s the only way I see if you want to be truly happy. That is not to say that you don’t try to steer your life, it means not to worry about the outcome of your choices once the choices have been made, as well as not lingering on the mistakes made in the past.

I expect to make more posts on this in the future, in the meantime you are welcome to comment.

Male hyper agency vs female hypo agency

Agency is the capacity to act in a world. Agents possess agency, objects do not posses agency.

I’ve already talked about the female tendency to let a male act on her behalf, something which originates from a time where our survival as a species was constantly at stake. In those days it was beneficial that females avoided high risk actions as much as possible.

The question is, how do you get another human being to do tasks that the person in question is capable of performing. The answer is quite simple, you make it seem as if the person is not capable of performing these tasks. In essence you reduce their perceived agency at the cost of increasing the agency of others. This is what has led to male hyper agency and female hypo agency.

I’m not ignoring the fact that on average human males are physically stronger than females, but this does not make females helpless or incapable of acting on her own.

Children, certainly when they’re very young, don’t have a lot of agency. They are legitimately in need of protection and care until they become adults. But once they are adults, they should in principle be able to act on their own behalf. Some ways of reducing perceived agency include imitating a childlike youthful appearance, pretending to be vulnerable and acting submissive.

Today, with all our modern technology, the physical advantages males have over females are becoming less relevant. It has become obvious females are capable of acting on their own, but still there females who at one point or another pull the reduced agency trick out of the hat in order to avoid or reduce the consequences of their actions. This sometimes means that a male automatically gets the role of hyper agent, making him responsible for actions that should be a shared responsibility of all parties involved.

I’m not ignoring the likely-hood that humans have evolved in such a way that supports this shift in agency. Long ago it was probably very useful in allowing our survive. But when you claim to be civilized, to have grown beyond the phase of mere animals, it is important to consider all aspects of life and not only the things that are convenient to you.

Realize that what I’m saying here implies that instinctual feelings are not by definition true, it takes sincere honesty to look at reality as we have it today and admit that a lot of things don’t match up to the reality of our evolutionary past. Becoming aware of your biological tendencies is a first step in achieving genuine personal growth.

It is time we as species end this lie of female hypo agency and start treating everyone like human beings. The current state of affairs is unhealthy for both females, who are treated like objects sometimes, and males, who are sometimes forced to be responsible for the actions of females when in fact they are only partially responsible.

This is all for now, if you have any comments, you are more than welcome to participate in the discussion.

Love is a fairytale

Humans, much like other species of animals have something built in that ensures survival of the species, but humans have chosen to idealize it. They’ve created an illusion that it something far more than it really is. That it is somehow far more than a biologically driven mechanism to ensure that people have sex.

For all that we have achieved, we seem to be investing a whole lot of energy and resources into something that isn’t real. It’s time to wake up and be honest to ourselves.